Hammer Down (Sacred Hearts MC Pacific Northwest Book 6) Read online

  Hammer Down

  Sacred Hearts PNW Chapter - Book VI

  A.J. Downey

  Contents

  BOOK SIX

  COPYRIGHT

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Also by A.J. Downey

  About A.J. Downey

  Published 2022 by Second Circle Press

  Text Copyright © 2022 A.J. Downey

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real except where noted and authorized. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing & book design by Maggie Kern @ Ms.K Edits

  Cover art by Dar Albert at Wicked Smart Designs

  Dedication

  In memory of Betty White, an animal lover to the very end. We'll miss you and your special brand of fuckery.

  Prologue

  Fish…

  It was still a little strange for me, sitting at the table, looking around at all the guys and being counted among them. I’d been a brother for something like a year and a half, pushing two years, but it still didn’t feel real. I still thought that I’d wake up and that it would all be a dream or some shit. I’d honestly never thought I would get this far, but here I was, and some other poor sod was where I’d been what felt like only moments before… except where I was uncertain if I would make it, I was damn sure Dipshit wouldn’t make the cut. I mean, damn, this dude was stupid and not in the he-was-just-sort-of-green kind of way, either. He was just plain dumb.

  Listening to D.T. and Rusty bitch about him was something else. Rusty, the old parts puller over at the boneyard, was downright disgusted, and the way D.T. said it, even Little Bird, with the patience of a damn saint, couldn’t even educate his dumb ass.

  “Look on the bright side,” Blackjack said from across the table, flicking some ash off the end of his joint into an ashtray like it was a cigarette… old habit, I guess. “Boy’s so fucking dumb, there’s no way he’s the law trying to infiltrate the big bad biker gang or some shit.”

  We were all a little half-baked and laughed probably a little too hard at that one.

  Our major brush with the law hadn’t been more than six months back. It was heading into a wet and cold winter out there, summer but the dust of fuckin’ memory.

  I rode year round, so it was all Gore-Tex and a can-do attitude, hot showers and hot coffee to warm up.

  With how it’d been pissing down rain for like the last week straight out there, I was feeling like I needed to bust out the goggles and the fuckin’ water wings from my little adventure through that car wash like four or five summers back.

  I said as much when one of the guys commented on the weather and left everyone in stitches.

  “We gonna have to start naming every new recruit things like ‘fish.’” Major said.

  “Duck,” Blackjack declared, staring off into space, mellow in his high.

  “Find a real mean motherfucker? Goose,” Cipher declared to another round of laughter.

  We’d wrapped up business a while ago and were just chilling, none of us in any real hurry to get out in the weather.

  “Y’all are some fuckin’ dumbass losers,” Nine declared over something I’d missed. My mornings started at like four thirty, and it’d been a long day of shoveling ice and slinging crates of frozen fish down at the market. I had barely had the time to get my ass home and shower, change my clothes, before making church.

  “Right, well, it ain’t getting any better out there.” I sighed. “I’m going home and pass out.”

  “Pussy!” Tic called, laughing at me and I shook my head.

  “Man, you try getting your ass up at four thirty every day, slinging fish and shoveling ice and shit.”

  I worked four twelves down at the market, and had Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off. Today was Friday. I usually powered through Saturday and Sunday with the boys and did nothing but fucking sleep and catch up on laundry on Mondays. It was a whole lot of rinse and repeat, but that was just life, I guess.

  I went out to my bike, the night dark, the air cold, the sky pissing rain in a steady fucking miserable nonstop drip to the point I thought we’d all give our left nut for a break.

  I took the tunnel, would pay the toll, just for the chance to be dry for a fuckin’ minute as I headed north to my shitty old hotel room turned studio apartment up on hooker alley, a.k.a. Aurora Ave N. in North Seattle.

  I was riding at a good clip, taking the curve near Green Lake, when something orange and white tumbled out from the Jersey barriers in place and stumbled into the roadway. I knew a cat or kitten when I saw it, and this was a bad stretch. It was pretty calm this time of night, so I pulled off, jumping the curb and stopping on the side there in the soggy grass right beside the sidewalk, the deserted Green Lake looping trail below to my right.

  I waited for a couple cages to pass, a truck, the kitten struggling not to get hit, and finally as soon as there was an opening, I darted out and snatched the little guy up – barely getting my ass back to safety without getting taken out myself. Fuckin’ crazy-ass cage drivers thinking they’re the next Dale Earnhardt or some shit, fuck!

  I got the cat under the light, and he looked up at me. It was bad. Half his little face and one eye were all raw hamburger, his fur wet and sticking up at odd angles, streaked with the rusty color of blood.

  “Oh, shit. Hang on, little man,” I said, and with his pitiful cries echoing in my ears, I thrust him into my jacket against my chest and zipped it up, trapping him.

  He struggled, but there wasn’t anywhere for the little guy to go. He was pretty fuckin’ weak.

  “We gotta get you to a vet,” I said. Straddling my bike, I looked up twenty-four-hour emergency vets near me.

  There was one up past my place, way past my place, that specialized in cats up toward Bothell, shit – a good almost twenty miles north.

  No problem.

  I got back onto 99 and managed to not get taken out. I twisted the throttle, shifting gears smoothly and hauling ass.

  It was slicker than owl shit out here, and I was trying not to get us both killed as the little ball of injured fur squirmed like a motherfucker inside my jacket.

  I pulled into the well-lit lot in front of the animal clinic’s doors that were marked with a bold red stripe, big white block letters going through it stating ‘emergency,’ and I hopped off the bike.

  Inside, it was well lit, but a little on the cooler side. A girl my age, maybe a little less, looked up from behind the receptionist wrap in a set of cartoon unicorn pony scrubs.

  “Help you?” she asked, looking at me confused as I dripped water on the non-slip gray mat in front of the wrap.

  “Yeah, he’s hurt bad,” I said, unzipping my coat and dragging the unfortunate little furball out. “I found him just by Green Lake, the sharp curves there.”

  The girl took off her chunky black-framed reading glasses and set them down, holding out her hands and taking him from me.

  “Oh, God,” she declared. “I’m the only one here. Come on back and help me,” she said, and I went with her. She started doing things with swift efficiency.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Fish,” I answered automatically.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Fish,” I repeated. “Everyone calls me Fish.”

  “I need a legal name for the paperwork?”

  “Oh, Saul Masters.”

  “Okay, Mr. Masters, and what’s his name?”

  “Uh… Nemo?” I thought about the conversation earlier.

  “And how will you be paying?” she asked.

  “Wait, that’s not my cat,” I said. “Is this how you get a cat?” My brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “This is how you get a cat,”
she affirmed, and I really looked at her, then.

  She was beautiful, even with her face free of makeup, her nails natural and clipped short, her hair up in a messy sort of loopy bun thing, the ends spiky and at all angles. Her skin was smooth, her eyes calculating and focused and the most astounding shade of gray, an almost silver in her face. I bet if she ever let that tawny golden wheat-blond hair down, that her eyes would be out of this world framed by it.

  “Cash, card, what?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said, snapping back with it. “I’ll pay it. Just fix him.”

  “My pleasure. Poor little guy is in really rough shape. He’s going to have to stay overnight, may need surgery. This could get really expensive.”

  “He’s a little scrapper, a fighter. I’ll pay it.”

  “We’re talking maybe a couple thousand dollars here, you sure?”

  “You trying to talk me out of it?” I asked with a half-smile.

  “We can’t take on another clinic cat,” she said. “I’m making sure. I would hate to put all sorts of care into him, call the doctor and wake him up to come down here, just to have you skip out on the bill and little Nemo here ends up in a kill shelter.”

  “Fuck that! This little guy fought way too hard to live. Just look at him.”

  She looked up at me and fixed me with those eyes, and I felt my heart do a barrel roll in my chest. Shit, she was pretty.

  “Let me get him stable, call the doctor, and get the rest of your information. Hand me that thing there.” She pointed at a weird tube looking thing that looked like it went on the end of your finger, but I’m sure that wasn’t what it was for. I obediently handed it over. “Okay, I think that’s all I need you for. Please don’t ditch,” she said.

  “I’ll be right out here in your waiting room,” I vowed.

  I went out and took a seat, tired, and fucked around on my phone just to stay awake. She came out a little while later.

  “Doc is on his way. He’s definitely going to need surgery for that eye. You want to get him neutered at the same time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Vaccinated against…” She listed off a bunch of shit I couldn’t follow.

  “Yeah, might as well do it all,” I said.

  “Alright.” She nodded and said, “We can take care of some of this upfront and the rest when you pick him up.”

  Five hundred and eighty-nine dollars later, I was damn sure hoping a blow job came with things. Yeah, shitty and douche baggy to say, I know, but all I could picture was her lips wrapped around my cock, her eyes rolled up and looking at me… Down boy.

  “Anything else you want to know?” she asked me.

  Without missing a beat, I shot back, “Your name would be nice.”

  She fixed me with a flat look, those eyes giving away the calculations that she had going on behind them and I waited her out. Finally, she said, “Kinzleigh.”

  “Kinzleigh?” I asked. “Never heard a name like that.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s East Tennessee for I was raised poor white trash,” she said, and her tone was clipped. My eyes went a little wide, and I laughed. She didn’t have a trace of an accent. I wondered if she worked on that.

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Kinzleigh,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you too… Fish. Can I get your number?” she asked, and I grinned. “To call about Nemo,” she added, and my grin only grew.

  “Sure thing.” I wrote it down on the pad and paper she handed me.

  She said, “I’ll call you as soon as he’s ready to go home.”

  I nodded, and it was halfway back down Aurora that it hit me, shit, I don’t even know if my apartment will allow a fucking cat… fuck me!

  I was going to have to figure that out, but it looked like I had a little time. What I couldn’t stop thinking about was Kinzleigh of the efficient sharp wit and silvery eyes. I wondered what her story was. Didn’t sound like it was a happy origin story by any means, but at the same time, neither was mine. So many people’s rarely were.

  I barely dragged myself through a hot shower before collapsing into bed, falling asleep to the vision of Kinzleigh looking up over the rim of those smart little glasses at me, naughty librarian style.

  I had some fucking dreams that night, I tell you what…

  1

  Fish…

  A few days later, I got the call from the vet’s office while I was shoveling ice in the freezer at work.

  “Hello?” I answered the unknown but local number, sniffing, and starting to shiver pretty quick despite my warm gear and waterproof shit over it. Didn’t matter wearing the shit to avoid the ice water. I was soaked anyway, from the inside with sweat.

  “Mr. Masters?” the terse but feminine voice asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Kinzleigh at the clinic. Little Nemo is ready to go home.”

  “Aw, yeah? Sweet. Uh, what time do you guys close?”

  “We don’t, we’re twenty-four hours, remember?”

  “Right!” I felt like a dumbass.

  “If you’re asking how late you can pick him up without an added after-hours fee, the answer is six o’clock.”

  “Right, right, that is what I was asking, but also… when are you off?”

  “You picking me up or the cat?” she asked.

  “Uh, both? Both is good. I’ll see you just before six. Have my cat and yourself ready,” I said.

  “Wait, what? But—” I didn’t let her finish. I hung up the phone and grinned. This could either go really well or really bad, depending. Guess we would just have to see.

  I stuck my phone back into my back pocket and heaving a breath got back to shoveling giant shovels full of ice into waiting bins while Dirk shook his head and said, “Rich catches you on the phone like that, he’ll be up your ass.”

  “Rich didn’t see it. It didn’t happen unless you’re fixin’ to narc me out.”

  Dirk shook his head quickly. “No way, man.”

  “Right answer,” I told him.

  “What was that about anyway?” he asked.

  “None of your fucking business,” I shot back, and he looked offended.

  “Okay, geez!”

  I turned and smiled to myself. Dirk was a good kid. A high school dropout that we were all just a little bit determined to make his life miserable enough to get him to go back to fuckin’ school.

  I got off at two, which was only an hour away and I was determined to finish my shift strong, go home and get the stink off me, and maybe get a cat nap in so I was fresh and ready in case I managed to score an actual date with Kinzleigh with my high-handedness.

  I gave myself fifty-fifty odds, which, in the grand scheme of things, weren’t great, but it was better than striking out completely.

  I guess we would just have to see.

  2

  Kinzleigh…

  Was I attracted to this?

  No…

  Wait!

  No…

  Maybe...?

  Really?

  Fuck!

  I hung up the handset on its cradle and shook my head, mystified at my non-response to his request – no heavy-handed demand for – for what? A date?

  Usually, I told a motherfucker to fuck right off if he pulled that kind of shit with me, but then I flashed back on him standing there in dripping leather, extracting this tiny half-murdered kitten out of his coat and how he hadn’t hesitated to throw down the cash to take care of the little guy.

  The wet hair, the clinging leather, and the lean physique under it all, in combination with those piercing steely blue eyes of his as they’d looked me over.

  Ugh… I needed to get laid.